I sadly grew up in a post-arcade world of video games so never got to experience the social aspect of playing with friends, discovering the latest machines and the golden era of 1980s gaming. But two people who did are the creative duo at the head of Krayon, Fei Hou and Rémi Maillat – so when Pac-Man celebrated its 45th anniversary recently, they discovered their shared nostalgia and set out to design a commemorative Krayon in honour of the game. The result is a 15 piece limited edition, the Krayon PAC-MAN, based on the Anywhere.
In short, this is an aesthetic re-interpretation of the Anywhere through a Pac-man filter. It’s mechanically identical to the core model with its 24-hour display that shows sunrise, sunset and calendar functions. However, instead of a sun for the 24-hour hand we have Pac-man. The other details have also been swapped for Pac-man items such as ghosts, fruit and dots.
Sunset is represented by a ‘power cookie’ which puts Pac-man into his empowered mode to eat ghosts – with said edible ghost representing midnight. Sunrise is then a regular ghost, either Blinky, Pinky, Inky or Clyde. Each of the 15 watches are also unique pieces and it’s the combination of fruit and which ghost is present on the dial that differentiates each model from the rest.
The centre of the dial features a patterned based on the blue of the maze to tie into the game even more while the typography of the calendar subdial, 24-hour scale and Krayon logo are in the classic pixelated style. In all cases, Krayon have used the original 1980s version of the game as their design inspiration rather than later iterations.
Powering the Krayon PAC-MAN display is the calibre C030 with 72-hour power reserve and manual winding. It consists of 432 components to operate the self-adjusting day/night indicator. As sunrise and sunset are based on your latitude, you can also have the watch set by Krayon’s watchmakers to match wherever you live, which is why the collection is called Anywhere.
In a full platinum case measuring 39mm with hand-painted Pac-man elements, this is a very exclusive watch, even if it wasn’t limited to 15 unique pieces. It’s priced at CHF 188,000 (approx. £178,500). According to one online listing, you could buy almost 30 original 1980 Pac-Man arcade machines for that money.
Price and Specs:
More details at Krayon.
Yes, sunrise/sunset indicators are rare, but more so is the pricing. This one is simply too high —probably why the edition is small.